The following is the sidebar to an article I wrote on Irish food history in America for the Spokane Spokesman-Review, published in March, 2007.
Picture a nineteen year old near-broke and Dublin-weary backpacker, with 9 pounds of Irish money to her name, set to sail back to England from the ferry terminal in Dun Laoghaire the next morning. Imagine her dismay when she discovers, late in the rainy December afternoon, after the banks have closed, that the ferry terminal is not open all night, and that the B&B’s in town charge at least 12 pounds per night.
After hours of tearful wandering in a shopping center, hungrily nibbling on crackers, wondering where and how she will sleep, our backpacker finally phones Mrs. Pittman’s B&B, inquiring in a pitiful voice whether they might accept a few English pounds along with Irish pounds as payment.
“Why, yes, dear, of course. And if you just have the English breakfast in the morning I’ll just charge you nine pounds.” (As if Mrs. Pittman knew just how much money the girl had!)
The next thing our damp backpacker knows, she’s eating a bowl of hot Irish stew by Mrs. Pittman’s roaring fireplace, followed by a thick wedge of chocolate cake and a glass of creamy milk for dessert; then, after a hot, hot bath, is tucked into a frilly bed with clean sheets in an upstairs bedroom for a sound sleep, such a change after raucous youth hostels.
An English breakfast consists, to our backpacker’s dismay, of oatmeal and toast and juice and tea and eggs and sausage (she wonders what she would’ve been served if she’d paid the full charge). It is the biggest and tastiest breakfast she has eaten for months. And then, since it is still raining, Mrs. Pittman directs the cheerful Mr. Pittman to drive our now well-fed traveler directly to the ferry terminal so she doesn’t have to walk clear across town.
Yes, the Irish are indeed lovely, generous people. That backpacker was me, and I have never forgotten the wonderful Mrs. Pittman in Dun Laoghaire and how she rescued me that cold, rainy night almost 20 years ago.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
Qu’est-ce que c’est what?
I’ve been obsessed with French culture for about a decade, and have been collecting language-learning tapes, CDs, CD-roms, and exercise books for several years, always expecting that eventually I’d settle down to serious French study. I have Berlitz, Pimsleur, Living Language, Learn in Your Car, and a few others, not to mention the entire audio and video and textbook collection for the Capretz “French in Action” method. In my French learning daydream, I’m always on a chaise by a swimming pool, wearing earphones and sunglasses while I practice pursing my lips to get a good “ou” sound and trying to make the back of my throat do that rolling “r” thing that is so impossible pour moi. Without that “rrr” I can’t even swear properly. Merde!
Two years ago, before we housesat for a month near Salon-de-Provence, I worked my way up to lesson 8 in the Pimsleur audio-only course, which in real-life France got me about as far as saying, “I would like to buy a stamp.” And “Would you like to get something to eat now? Or later?” We had a great time anyway, probably because we went around saying things in French like “Do you have a table for three?” and “I love to eat French food” and “It’s so beautiful” all the time. Or maybe that my French vocabulary was much better suited for menu reading than it was for everyday conversations. Or maybe it was that Reed, who was 4 then, seemed to eat with such gusto everywhere we went.
“The quiche comes with salad,” the waiter warned me, looking skeptically at Reed, who was red-cheeked and hungry after an entire morning of digging in the sand of the children’s area in Paris' Luxembourg Gardens.
“It’s okay, he loves salad,” I assured him. Our service improved rapidly after that, until by the end of the meal, as we were enjoying our apple tart, the waiter was practically sitting beside us, discussing the fine points of how to translate the menu for English-speaking customers.
“’Legumes’ to Americans means lentils and dried peas,” I explained. “Not vegetables.”
The twenty-something waiter practiced saying “vegetables.”
“And a tart, to Americans, is kind of like a pie, only without the crust on top,” I enlightened him.
“Pie,” he practiced.
Outside the restaurants, things didn’t always go so well.
“Are you English?” they’d ask, in French.
“American,” we’d say, also in French, sort of.
“On vacation?” they ask, in French.
“Oui, on vacation!” we’d answer, in French. After a few encounters like this, we started announcing our status as vacationers right off, to save them time.
“We’re Americans on vacation,” we’d say in French, with a beautiful accent. Only later did we realize how stupid we must have sounded. In an encounter with a hunter in the woods behind the Provencal villa we were housesitting I decided to confirm my suspicions about what he was after, only I didn't know the word for wild pig. So in a flash of brilliance I scratched on the ground with a stick, since everywhere in the woods we'd seen signs of their rooting around trees. The hunter lit up. "Oui! Porc!" he grinned. We all smiled at each other for a minute, with nothing else we could say. "Bonjour!" he said, continuing on his way. "Bonne chance!" I said to his back, not quite loud enough for him to hear, since I wasn't quite sure if I was saying the right thing. Then we went back up to the house, to make sure we didn't get shot.
We determined, like Patton, that we would return, and furthermore, that we would return better able to communicate in la langue Francais. Now I’m writing emails to French farmers, asking them if we can work on their farms, looking up the French words for things like “handyman” and “healthy” and the verb conjugations for future conditional tense. It has been an intense education, but addictive. Now that I’ve actually communicated in basic, mangled French with French people, it frustrates me not to be able to say and write whatever I want, without spending a hour with the dictionary.
Walt, who has quietly determined not to be humiliated in French as badly as we were last time, has been working hard in his studies, and suffers alternately from elation about his progress and hopelessness about the sheer number of verb conjugations to learn. But he suggested just a few days ago that instead of making plans to visit Spain, Portugal, Greece, and the Netherlands during our year abroad, we should concentrate on France, with just our originally planned side visits to Italy and Ireland, which I'm starting to think of as English-speaking breaks. (The farm we're visiting in Italy operates in English.)
“If we really want to learn the French language,” he said, “we ought to spend most of our time in France. Bien sur.” Of course.
So we will. Here is our schedule so far:
September 5-17: with host Hermine, at the Chateau de Sacy, in Sacy-le-Petit north of Paris
September 17 – October 15: with hosts la famille Colin, at Le Ferme des Fromentaux, near Retournac in the Haute-Loire region, between St Etienne and Le Puy
October 15 – October 28: with hosts Anne and Pierre Magnani, outside the village of Saint Isidore, in the hills west of Nice
Two years ago, before we housesat for a month near Salon-de-Provence, I worked my way up to lesson 8 in the Pimsleur audio-only course, which in real-life France got me about as far as saying, “I would like to buy a stamp.” And “Would you like to get something to eat now? Or later?” We had a great time anyway, probably because we went around saying things in French like “Do you have a table for three?” and “I love to eat French food” and “It’s so beautiful” all the time. Or maybe that my French vocabulary was much better suited for menu reading than it was for everyday conversations. Or maybe it was that Reed, who was 4 then, seemed to eat with such gusto everywhere we went.
“The quiche comes with salad,” the waiter warned me, looking skeptically at Reed, who was red-cheeked and hungry after an entire morning of digging in the sand of the children’s area in Paris' Luxembourg Gardens.
“It’s okay, he loves salad,” I assured him. Our service improved rapidly after that, until by the end of the meal, as we were enjoying our apple tart, the waiter was practically sitting beside us, discussing the fine points of how to translate the menu for English-speaking customers.
“’Legumes’ to Americans means lentils and dried peas,” I explained. “Not vegetables.”
The twenty-something waiter practiced saying “vegetables.”
“And a tart, to Americans, is kind of like a pie, only without the crust on top,” I enlightened him.
“Pie,” he practiced.
Outside the restaurants, things didn’t always go so well.
“Are you English?” they’d ask, in French.
“American,” we’d say, also in French, sort of.
“On vacation?” they ask, in French.
“Oui, on vacation!” we’d answer, in French. After a few encounters like this, we started announcing our status as vacationers right off, to save them time.
“We’re Americans on vacation,” we’d say in French, with a beautiful accent. Only later did we realize how stupid we must have sounded. In an encounter with a hunter in the woods behind the Provencal villa we were housesitting I decided to confirm my suspicions about what he was after, only I didn't know the word for wild pig. So in a flash of brilliance I scratched on the ground with a stick, since everywhere in the woods we'd seen signs of their rooting around trees. The hunter lit up. "Oui! Porc!" he grinned. We all smiled at each other for a minute, with nothing else we could say. "Bonjour!" he said, continuing on his way. "Bonne chance!" I said to his back, not quite loud enough for him to hear, since I wasn't quite sure if I was saying the right thing. Then we went back up to the house, to make sure we didn't get shot.
We determined, like Patton, that we would return, and furthermore, that we would return better able to communicate in la langue Francais. Now I’m writing emails to French farmers, asking them if we can work on their farms, looking up the French words for things like “handyman” and “healthy” and the verb conjugations for future conditional tense. It has been an intense education, but addictive. Now that I’ve actually communicated in basic, mangled French with French people, it frustrates me not to be able to say and write whatever I want, without spending a hour with the dictionary.
Walt, who has quietly determined not to be humiliated in French as badly as we were last time, has been working hard in his studies, and suffers alternately from elation about his progress and hopelessness about the sheer number of verb conjugations to learn. But he suggested just a few days ago that instead of making plans to visit Spain, Portugal, Greece, and the Netherlands during our year abroad, we should concentrate on France, with just our originally planned side visits to Italy and Ireland, which I'm starting to think of as English-speaking breaks. (The farm we're visiting in Italy operates in English.)
“If we really want to learn the French language,” he said, “we ought to spend most of our time in France. Bien sur.” Of course.
So we will. Here is our schedule so far:
September 5-17: with host Hermine, at the Chateau de Sacy, in Sacy-le-Petit north of Paris
September 17 – October 15: with hosts la famille Colin, at Le Ferme des Fromentaux, near Retournac in the Haute-Loire region, between St Etienne and Le Puy
October 15 – October 28: with hosts Anne and Pierre Magnani, outside the village of Saint Isidore, in the hills west of Nice
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Anything new under the Tuscan sun?
Sure, there’s plenty yet to discover in trendy Tuscany – if you’ve never been there before!
Technically I’ve been to Tuscany – I spent 3 days in Florence when I was 21 – but I don’t really count that, although I do remember standing in line at the Uffizi to see Botticelli’s “Venus,” and downing a lot of coffee ice cream.
My family will be in a less crowded bit of Tuscany, at the Spannocchia estate near Siena (www.spannocchia.com). There, a very old estate has been turned into a working example of self-sufficient, sustainable, organic agriculture. Guests staying in one of the farm’s renovated farmhouses or the main house are fed typical, delicious Tuscan food produced almost entirely on the estate; interns can come to labor and learn how human-scaled agriculture really works; all this in the lovely, rolling Tuscan countryside.
We’ll be there during the off-season when the weather is cooler, the time of year when farmers turn their attentions to fixing fences, and also to butchering pigs and making the salami and other cured meat products for which the area is so well known.
My grandpa Draper raised “contented” hogs on his Iowa farm, so I grew up with a love for pork, and no illusions at all about the fate of all the Babes and Wilburs of this world. I’ve never actually butchered a pig but I know it’s a lot different than butchering a chicken, which I have done. (Well, actually, my husband did the actual knife work, I just learned the fine art of the defeathering machine.) However, I figure that if I'm going to eat something, I should know exactly what's involved in its production. So I’m mentally preparing myself already for the hardest part of bringing home the bacon, which is, at this stage, one of my favorite foods.
My son, however, has no such worries. A couple weeks ago when he was fretting about another family living in our house while we're away, I comforted him with this thought: "In Italy, we'll be at a place where you can eat all the bread dipped in olive oil that you want!" THAT cheered him up considerably.
Technically I’ve been to Tuscany – I spent 3 days in Florence when I was 21 – but I don’t really count that, although I do remember standing in line at the Uffizi to see Botticelli’s “Venus,” and downing a lot of coffee ice cream.
My family will be in a less crowded bit of Tuscany, at the Spannocchia estate near Siena (www.spannocchia.com). There, a very old estate has been turned into a working example of self-sufficient, sustainable, organic agriculture. Guests staying in one of the farm’s renovated farmhouses or the main house are fed typical, delicious Tuscan food produced almost entirely on the estate; interns can come to labor and learn how human-scaled agriculture really works; all this in the lovely, rolling Tuscan countryside.
We’ll be there during the off-season when the weather is cooler, the time of year when farmers turn their attentions to fixing fences, and also to butchering pigs and making the salami and other cured meat products for which the area is so well known.
My grandpa Draper raised “contented” hogs on his Iowa farm, so I grew up with a love for pork, and no illusions at all about the fate of all the Babes and Wilburs of this world. I’ve never actually butchered a pig but I know it’s a lot different than butchering a chicken, which I have done. (Well, actually, my husband did the actual knife work, I just learned the fine art of the defeathering machine.) However, I figure that if I'm going to eat something, I should know exactly what's involved in its production. So I’m mentally preparing myself already for the hardest part of bringing home the bacon, which is, at this stage, one of my favorite foods.
My son, however, has no such worries. A couple weeks ago when he was fretting about another family living in our house while we're away, I comforted him with this thought: "In Italy, we'll be at a place where you can eat all the bread dipped in olive oil that you want!" THAT cheered him up considerably.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
A lot more than potatoes
Cool, green Ireland is one of the hottest places in the world for foodies. Farm cheeses and smoked meats, a large variety of fresh organic produce, and creative cooks have completely transformed Ireland's culinary landscape in the almost 20 years since I first stepped off the ferry in Wexford from St. David's, Wales, at the crack of dawn one chilly December morning, and hitchhiked to Cork. The lady who gave us a lift in her band's van played the soundtrack from Phantom of the Opera almost the entire trip, but had no food to share.
My traveling companions (Mary, Liz, and Andrea) and I made do with crackers and cheese, canned pasta, and not-quite-done potatoes, cooked in warm but poorly equipped hostel kitchens, as we made our way west from Cork, looping back northeast to Dublin. We Americans were young and inexperienced, and I wasn't even brave enough to try the clear poteen (sp?) offered to me in an unlabeled bottle by one of the locals. I was afraid, I guess, of waking up sometime the next day, with my passport, money, clothes, and friends all gone!
This time, my family intends to eat very well indeed. We'll be helping at Gubbeen Farm in West Cork (www.gubbeen.com) during the month of April (2008), when the cows will be on fresh grass and their milk will make the tastiest of cheeses. Our host, Giana Ferguson, has been instrumental in Ireland's Slow Food movement and has been making cheese for much of her life. My six year old, Reed, like most kids, loves cheese. I know Giana will have a lot to teach us about how to make it!
My traveling companions (Mary, Liz, and Andrea) and I made do with crackers and cheese, canned pasta, and not-quite-done potatoes, cooked in warm but poorly equipped hostel kitchens, as we made our way west from Cork, looping back northeast to Dublin. We Americans were young and inexperienced, and I wasn't even brave enough to try the clear poteen (sp?) offered to me in an unlabeled bottle by one of the locals. I was afraid, I guess, of waking up sometime the next day, with my passport, money, clothes, and friends all gone!
This time, my family intends to eat very well indeed. We'll be helping at Gubbeen Farm in West Cork (www.gubbeen.com) during the month of April (2008), when the cows will be on fresh grass and their milk will make the tastiest of cheeses. Our host, Giana Ferguson, has been instrumental in Ireland's Slow Food movement and has been making cheese for much of her life. My six year old, Reed, like most kids, loves cheese. I know Giana will have a lot to teach us about how to make it!
Friday, January 26, 2007
A year of good eating in Europe, coming right up!
Pack up the whole family for a year in Europe, to live, work, and eat with the farmers and folks who care about real food?
Oui oui, we say.
Our family's gastro-sabbatical officially begins in August 2007. But anticipation is half the fun, so I'll start writing now, while we're in the planning stages. So far: a month at the Spannocchia estate in Siena, Italy... a month with Gaia Foundation in Malta... a month or longer in the Netherlands, and a month or so in Ireland. France, Spain, Greece, and others, are still in the works. Mmm, I'm getting hungry already.
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